Mark Phillips' Pages: Workbook: 7/15/04: Early a.m. To walk along the clifftops and wake up.

Jacob Lawrence, "Harlem Hospital's Free Clinic" (1943) — Jacob Lawrence, *Harlem Hospital's Free Clinic is Crowded with Patients Every Morning and Evening* (1943)

July 15, 2004:

Early a.m. To walk along the clifftops and wake up. But there's something wrong. Move a foot forward, your body spins hard to the right so that you face the drop. Stop yourself. Turn to face the direction you want to face. Step again. Your body spins right toward the fall. Stop yourself. After a few moments your feet again respond to control.

Snack machine. Twenty-five cents. Two dimes into the slot but then the world picks itself and spins itself clockwise, hard, enough force to require you to grip the machine with both hands to avoid falling. There are no "spots" but you feel you could lose consciousness. Deep inhale, stand up straight, step back. Your body spins hard to the right without being asked, so that now you face a foreign direction, while around your head the cosmos circles slowly, spinning, like a leisurely-moving wheel.

Gone in a few seconds. Yet all day there's a subtle throbbing beneath your skull.

Stroke? Alien mind control? Probably just sleep. You're too young, and far too vital, for your body to begin stripping its gears in any significant way.